


Selective Green Thumb

by Eyrdamun



Category: Persona 5
Genre: M/M, November spoilers, hanahaki, post true ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-24
Updated: 2018-10-24
Packaged: 2019-08-06 22:52:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16396616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eyrdamun/pseuds/Eyrdamun
Summary: Akechi Goro doesn't like gardening. He's good at it in the worst way possible.





	Selective Green Thumb

The day felt never ending. His afternoon classes dragged on, and on, and on, and- he smiles tiredly at the barista, orders one cup of black coffee. He watches lithe fingers work for a minute before stealing the employee's attention once more.

Not wanting to think about university, he asks for curry, changes his order into a combo.

"Yeah, sure," Ren says. His eyes crinkle slightly, the smile Goro had once traced with gentle fingers hidden behind a face mask. He wouldn't have known it was there if he didn't already know what signs to search for.

Ren places the drink and plate in front of him with all the familiarity of a server to a seldomly seen customer.

It's all Goro is now.

"Thank you."

Ren shrugs without sparing him a glance. Staring down his meal, Goro's smile taints with resentment underneath the plastic layer of his expression. He clears the obstruction in his throat nonchalantly.

Ren adjusts the mask covering his nose and mouth.

The thing in his throat goes down with the rice. It simmers and disappears as he reminds himself of what he knows. Reminds himself he is at fault, that he can have what he wants any time.

Ren scratches the corner of his mouth over the white clinical mask. 

"You come here often. Ever since high school, I - uh- is it weird ? I don't think we ever spoke much but at the same time..."

Goro chuckles. It's a sound as ugly as his thoughts. It's nice, he thinks, how Ren refuses to remember. It's bitter how he doesn't get the help he needs and drowns in ignorance. "We talked, yes."

He keeps it vague, lets Ren's willfully blinded mind read into it.

"Ah. Gotcha." Ren grabs a snack, some chips that Goro used to try to convince him to quit. He had succeeded, but Ren forgot. Goro is relieved to find the packaging still sealed shut, even moreso when all Ren does is put them in the kitchen near his bag. "Sorry, my memory is a bit of a mess."

Goro knows. They've had a conversation, a minor argument, about Ren eating factory food he can't freeze or boil. He smiles as gently as angry yearning allows him. "It's nothing to apologize about."

It's the wrong person apologizing anyway.

"Still, I feel like we used to talk a lot. Were we friends?" Ren slouches, predictably, in front of him. "I've forgotten some important stuff, I wouldn't be surprised."

Goro shakes his head. Part of him is greedy, and he wants to shut those pieces out. "Perhaps it was for the best if you forgot." Ren's friends remember him clearly.

And it's dangerous how his heart drums, how his blood sings. Because he still recalls the last time, still sees the flowers pouring from Ren's mouth, his tears like dew on the petals. How some were red, how Ren's breathing shivered and gasped, how the blossoms swayed.

It was a breathtaking sight, chocolate lilies decorated Ren so well, so ethereal. It was a picture on stained glass, even more fragile and just as ephemeral as smoke. Because even knowing Ren didn't, doesn't, believe he loves him, even knowing he caused Ren, lungs and veins already so frail and carved from the first time, to relapse...

He catches the tail end of Ren's snort. With that, the man he breaks and keeps breaking gets back to work.

"Should you exert yourself this much?" Ren raises an eyebrow in suspicion. Goro points to his mouth.

"Oh!" He can see his lips moving under the fabric. He thinks they should be back to normal, no longer fading into blue. "No, I just. Hanahaki. Twice- can you believe that?"

"Yes, actually."

He watches Ren rub his nape awkwardly. Recalls how the last time he saw the action, it was in Goro's kitchen.

"Yeah, I don't remember having told you that."

"You didn't." Goro takes a sip of his coffee before scooping up more food. "I come here often enough."

Ren does the same little dance he always does. He averts his gaze, Goro can tell he bites his bottom lip, and his foot taps restlessly. Wedding bells, the ones from the last stupid movie Ann recommended back when he and Ren were--

They wail into sirens.

"Anyway, yeah. Doctor said there's no way I can even think of going out or opening a window without it."

It's not uncommon at all for once victims to fall again.

"Like, it should be ok if I ever- just as long as I have hope, it would be fine."

Ren couldn't trust his I-love-you's. "You don't sound very sure."

He doesn't reply. Instead, he washes already clean dishes.

Goro can't blame him. Not after the hell he put him through that November, not after he donned Loki to tear him apart. Goro continues his meal. He wonders how he would have felt if his claws had teared into the garden he sowed in Ren.

No, he didn't sow it. The seeds float freely in the air, from one person to another. Unless one had been cleansed, unless one had gone under the knife to separate the roots that mingle inside one's bronchioles and into one's pulmonary veins to spread to the rest of the body, one would always carry the infection within them.

"Were we close?" Ren asks above the rushing faucet.

"You don't have to force yourself." Meal eaten, Goro nurses his coffee.

"So we were."

Goro could tell him the truth. Remove the eyesore of a white mask covering Ren's mouth and nose, kill him with a kiss. Kill him with honesty Ren no longer believes.

"Do you always try to play the role people assign you?"

The pollen is transmitted most effectively through saliva and a breath's caress on the cheek. Goro carries it in his lungs, has known for a while, had consumed and assumed the disease on Ren's tongue back during their thieving days. Back when Goro still had a road to pave on other's misery.

But Ren loves him, Goro sees it in the way he keeps killing him. The flowers in Goro's own body are only ever dormant. Otherwise and waking, they die too quickly to rot and poison him.

Ren laughs. "You make it sound like i'm setting myself up for manipulation!"

"You could be."

"Alright, my memory is not that bad."

Goro wonders if Ren notices how he never once steps from behind the counter when he's around now.

"And yet you ask me."

"Look,my memory is worse than most cases." Ren doesn't elaborate. He doesn't have to, Goro knows about the drugs the interrogators had used back then. He knows how much they forcefully injected into Ren, can extrapolate how far along the first infection was.

He also knows the disease itself doesn't necessarily lead to any memory loss, but the trauma it comes hand in hand with does.

"Sometimes, forgetting is a self defense mechanism." That's all he offers.

Ren hums. The mask muffling the sound. It's a pity, Goro likes listening to the real sound.

He could- he could make him understand. Leave the mask on until it gets through Ren's head, until his love is unquestioned and wrapping Ren's heart in an iron box. A box that's bullet proof, that flowers could never tear open. A box, welded shut.

As long as bad days are few and rare, it could happen.

"Is your coffee not cold yet?"

It's nice to dream. To have a goal, really. It keeps Goro begrudgingly alive. It would be easier if he had to be operated, then he and Ren could be together more easily. Issues and all.

"It's still warm."

He's patient. He takes a sip.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Work is boring rn


End file.
